25th Sunday Year B (Gospel: Mark 9:30-37) Padre Pio: Trust and simplicity, like children

 

Today is the feast day of St. Pius of Pietrelcina, but better known to most people as Padre Pio.  However, since it falls on a Sunday we don't officially celebrate it since Sunday always takes precedence.  But I would like to share with you a few thoughts about Padre Pio which also tie in with today's Gospel.  

Padre Pio only died in 1968, the year before I was born, which fairly puts him in perspective.  He was a Capuchin Franciscan who lived in an obscure monastery in the East of Italy.  If you have doubts about the reality of the spiritual world, read a book on his life.  For fifty years of his life he had the stigmata, or wounds of Christ in his hands and feet and side, which bled continually.  They were examined by doctors several times but they couldn’t explain them.  He also had the gift of being able to read people’s hearts in confession, which meant that if someone made a simple confession keeping some things back he would be able to remind them about what they needed to confess.  Many of the Holy Souls are said to have come to him asking him for prayers.  But perhaps what was most striking for people who saw him was that he suffered the passion of Christ every time he celebrated the mass.  You can still get DVDs of him celebrating the mass and it is quite something to watch.  He was forbidden from preaching, because the Vatican were suspicious of the mystical gifts that he had, but he didn’t need to because just watching him celebrate the mass was enough.  Thousands of people came to be present as he celebrated the mass.  During his life he was one of the most photographed people in the world. 

Why were people drawn to this priest who lived in an obscure village in Italy?  It had to be more than just because he had these strange experiences and gifts.  The reason why people were drawn to him, is the same reason why people were drawn to people like Mother Teresa, a poor wrinkled old woman, or to John Paul II and many others.  It is because people experienced God through them in an extraordinary way.  God is attractive and that’s why people who are close to God, or holy, are attractive.  People want to be close to them, because we are instinctively drawn to God’s presence.  Holiness (being close to God) is often confused with piety (showing great devotion to holy things, or certain prayers), but the two are not the same.  People who are pious are not necessarily holy and people who are holy are not necessarily pious.  Padre Pio could apparently be quite gruff, but people were drawn to him all the same.

I remember reading a story about one woman who went to Pietrelcina to go to him for confession.  She had to wait several days to be heard, because there were so many people going to him at that time.  When she finally went to confession and confessed, he just closed the little door on her without saying anything.  She was furious and went back in a rage to the house where she was staying.  The owner of the house told her not to worry, but just to think for a few days and then go back.  As she began to calm down and reflect on what she had said, she realised that she had been quite insincere and had really only been going out of curiosity.  She then went back a few days later, made a more sincere confession and she said that he couldn’t have been kinder.  He obviously recognised that she was insincere the first time and this apparent rejection that she experienced was really what she needed.  It shocked her into reality.

One of the sayings that is often associated with Padre Pio is this: ‘Pray, hope and don’t worry.’  It is so simple and yet so wise.  Often the advice that holy people like Padre Pio gave was so simple and I think that is the key to growing in faith.  We cannot figure it out, and we will get ourselves in knots if we try, because what we believe in is totally beyond our understanding.

In the Old Testament there is the story of Naaman the leper who came from Damascus and went to the prophet Elisha in Israel to be healed.  Elisha told him to go and bathe in the Jordan seven times.  When he heard this he was furious because he thought that was so stupid.  He said, ‘Aren’t the waters in my own country better than here?’  But then his servants pushed him and said, ‘If the prophet had told you to do something really difficult wouldn’t you have done it?  So why not do this, even though it seems so simple?’  (See 2 kings 5).  So eventually he gave in and went to the river and he was healed.  God often leads us in ways that are so simple.

In the Gospel the Lord presents us with an interesting model.  When the disciples are arguing about who is the greatest, he presents them with a child.  What’s so special about a child?  Perhaps two things in particular: trust and simplicity.  Children show total trust, and children keep things simple, often in a very disarming way, as you know.  The more we respond to this draw that God plants inside of us, the more we begin to realise that it is very simple.  And people tell me, ‘Oh but father it is not so simple, it is really very complicated.’  No it’s not.  We make it complicated.  If God has given us a way to follow him it must be possible for everyone without exception.  And if it is possible for everyone without exception, then it must be very simple.  That is why several times, the Lord presented the disciples with the model of a child.  ‘Unless you become like little children you cannot enter the kingdom of God.’  He is saying, ‘Trust me, your God, as a child trusts its parents.’  The path is a simple one. 

22nd Sunday Yr B (Gospel: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23) We must love one another, but God first.

After mass one Sunday a young man said something interesting to me.  He said, ‘Father, I think that at the mass you should be talking about loving each other and not just talking about things from the bible which people don’t understand.’  It is an interesting point and I agreed with him partly.  A few years ago at a wedding a man said almost the exact same thing to me.  He said, ‘You should just be telling us to be good to each other.  There is no need for all these words from St. Paul to the Corinthians, etc.’ They are both absolutely right about the need to talk about loving each other, because that is one of the most important things that Jesus asked us to do, ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’  ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’  That is how Jesus told us that people would recognise us as Christians, by the way we love each other.  But there is another part to it which they are forgetting.

If we are to love one another, and that is what the Lord God asks us to do, where are we supposed to get the strength to do that?  How are you supposed to love people who drive you crazy, or who are unjust to you, or who do you wrong, or steal from you, who have cheated you out of money, or offended your family?  Since they are in the wrong, are we still expected to love them?  Yes we are.  ‘Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you.’  It seems to be a lot to ask.  In fact it can seem quite unrealistic.  This is where we have to go back to the bible and see what else God said to us, to try and make sense of this.  And Jesus says, the two most important commandments are, first, ‘You must love the Lord your God above everything else’.  Then, ‘You must love your neighbour as yourself.’  This may not seem very important, but this is where the answer lies.

What God is telling us is that if we are rooted in him, if he is at the centre, and we become more and more filled with him and with his love, then and only then will we have the ability to love other people.  We get the strength to love people, especially those we find more difficult to love, from the love we experience from God in the first place.  The more our relationship with him grows, the more this is possible.

Let me give you one example. There is a woman called Sister Alvera, from Italy.  Several years ago she set up a community to help drug addicts recover.  She believed that what these people were missing more than anything else in their lives was the love of God, and that this was where their problem was really coming from.  So she set up a centre to help them recover, a place where they could experience the love of God first hand from other people.  They live like a religious community.  They have no TV, no radio and no newspapers.  They do a lot of physical work and they pray a lot together.  The interesting thing is that through this way of life (which is basically a monastic way of life – prayer and work) hundreds of men have overcome their drug addiction, but more importantly they have discovered faith, discovered the love of God for them and begun completely new lives.  Sr. Alvera now has 36 different centres all over the world.  And just a few years ago she opened one in Knock. It is called the Cenacolo community.

There are hundreds of people like Sr. Alvera and not all religious either.  Mother Teresa is another extraordinary one.  How do they do this kind of work?  Where do they get the strength to work with people who can be very difficult and very ungrateful?  The answer is simple.  They are completely rooted in God.  Their own personal relationship with God is where they get the strength and energy.

Now you might be saying, well that’s all fine for them, but I don’t have that kind of relationship with God, I just about get to mass on Sundays.  But what God is showing us is that our ability to love one another, to put up with and respect those we don’t like, or agree with, comes from our relationship with him.  The more we come to know God, the more we can love the people around us, starting with our own families, our spouse, whoever is closest to us.  As we come to know the Lord more, our ability to love others also grows.  So the key is in coming closer to God, nothing else.

How do we come closer to God?  First, through reading his words in the bible.  The Scriptures are like personal love letters to us from God.  They are written for us personally.  Also, through receiving Jesus in the Eucharist.  We cannot get any closer to God than that.  And also through repenting of sin, because God asks us to do that.  To say that we don’t have any sins or that we don’t need to repent of them is to call God a liar.  We are sinners, we continually need to repent.  We also deepen and live our relationship with God through prayer, which is simply communicating with God. 

All of these things help to bring about conversion of the heart, rediscovering God, coming closer to him.  Only then will we be able to love the people around us and only then will our society begin to improve.

‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.  You must love your neighbour as yourself.’

21st Sunday Yr B (Gospel: John 6:60-69) What about you, will you go away too?

A few years ago I spent two days in a parish in Los Angeles.  The parish priest was an Irish man and he was explaining how things work over there.  He said that for years there was a man in the parish who used to lead the folk group.  He played the guitar.  Then one day he decided to start his own church.  So he rented a building down the street and started his own church, just like that.  That’s how it works in LA.  I doubt if it would happen so easily here.

What if you could change whatever parts of the faith you wanted to?  You could have women priests, married priests, divorce.  You could change some of the more difficult teachings like having to love your enemies; seems a bit extreme after all.  And you could tailor it just to suit your own needs. You could believe what you wanted to believe.  What would you end up with? A religion of nice ideas, of wishful thinking.  It would mean nothing.  It might make you feel better, but it would be empty.  Why? because it would be man made, not God made.

The word of God and the teaching of God can be difficult, but at least they are the teachings of God.  It’s not just something we made up.  We are free to either take it or leave it, to accept it and struggle with it, or to walk away from it.

Look at what happened in this Gospel passage.  Jesus was just after teaching about the Eucharist.  He had said, ‘I am the bread of life’ and ‘unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not have life in you’.  And the people said, ‘this is ridiculous, who could accept it’ and they walked away.  But Jesus’ response is even more interesting.  He didn’t go after them and say, ‘let me explain’.  He said to the disciples, ‘are you going to go away too’?  In other words he said, ‘this is the teaching, take it or leave it.’  And it says that many people stopped following him then.  They couldn’t accept what he said, so they left.  But he didn’t change anything he had said.  How could he, if it’s the truth?  And this applies to all of the teachings of Christ, handed down to us.  They don’t change.  They can not change.  But we are free to accept them or not.

Jesus says to us, ‘if you love me you will keep my commandments.’  Above all this means putting putting God above everything else in your life; above your wife or husband, above your children, above your work.  God must be at the center.  And God assures us, if we put him first, everything else will follow.

If it were impossible for us to follow God’s teachings God wouldn’t have given them to us.  So it must be possible to follow them.  Trying to do it on your own seems impossible and it probably is.  But God doesn’t ask us to do it on our own.  He asks us to continually turn to him and receive his help, which he gives us through prayer, through Holy Communion, Confession and all the sacraments.  God knows exactly what we’re able for and He gives us all the help we need, if we ask for it.

At the best of times it can be difficult to live our faith.  But the invitation is to keeping coming with an open heart to listen to what God might be saying to us?  Have we already decided we know what God has to say? Could God say something new to us that we haven’t heard before? It is an ongoing struggle for us, but we believe a very worthwhile one.

God also says to us, ‘what about you, will you go away too?’  And we can go away, or we can say, ‘Lord where else will we go, you have the message of eternal life and we believe, we know you are the holy one of God.’

20th Sunday Yr B (Gospel: John 6:51-58) The Eucharist is the source of our life

During the time our economy was doing better there were more jobs around and naturally everyone was happy about that.  Yet how is it that despite those better times economically people didn’t seem to be much happier?  There seemed to be much more pressure on people to ‘succeed’, people had less and less time for the ordinary things.  Everyone seemed to be mad busy trying to get money.  The rate of suicide increased and so did the rate of crime.  What was wrong?  We thought we finally had it all together.

We are experts at looking after the body, but most people are extremely ignorant when it comes to looking after the spirit, or soul and we are body and soul.  As a result, no amount of money or work, or the right house or car, will bring us happiness, because there is an emptiness inside us that material things cannot fill and will never fill.  This is the spiritual side of ourselves which can only be fulfilled by what is spiritual.  Sometimes it takes a death, or serious illness, to make us wake up to this.  We will only be fulfilled in God because God has created us this way.

In this Gospel Jesus is talking about just this.  He says, ‘If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you.’  ‘Whoever eats me, will draw life from me.’  Jesus himself is telling us that this is where we will find fulfillment, in him whom we receive in the Eucharist, in Holy Communion.  This is why Jesus is constantly inviting us to spend time with him and to receive him often.  But we object, we don’t have time…  Let me tell you a short story.

When the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, had just begun, there were only a few of them working, but there was a huge amount of work to be done and they were really finding it hard to manage.  So they prayed to God and asked him to show them what they should do.  They felt that the Lord was telling them to spend an extra hour a day in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament; that is an extra hour before the Blessed Sacrament and an hour less of work.  But they thought to themselves, ‘we already don’t have enough time to work, so how can we give an extra hour to prayer?’  However, since they really felt that this was what God was saying to them, they decided they would try to be obedient to it.  So they began to give an extra hour a day to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and an hour less to work.   The interesting thing is that after a short time many more people began to join the order and soon they had lots of extra people to help them with the work.  God will never be outdone in generosity.  If you give time to God He will make it up to you. 

Finally, it is important to remember that while Jesus is humble enough to give himself to us in Holy Communion, we should be careful about how we approach him.  He has come for sinners and we are sinners.  But if we receive him often we should also confess our sins often.  God has given us the gift of Holy Communion, but He has also given us the gift of confession, so that we can be free of sin and so that we can approach him as we should, with humility.  This is one place where we cannot demand our rights, because before God we have no rights.  Everything from God is a gift.  So we should confess to a priest, especially if there is something serious that we have done.  And we cannot say that we have no sins.  St. John says in one of his letters: ‘If anyone says they have not sinned they are calling God a liar’ (1 John 1.10). This is God’s word.  If we feel emptiness within us, it is probably because our spirits are starving.  Jesus is the one who will fulfill us.

I am the bread of life.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in them.

19th Sunday Year B (Gospel: John 6:41-51) Get up and eat or the journey will be too long for you

Have you ever felt so sick and tired of everything that you found yourself saying, ‘I’ve had enough.  I’m sick of everything.  I wish I was dead’?  I think most people can relate to this every now and again.  I know I can.  I find it very consoling that the prophet Elijah also said this.  This is what he says in the first reading, ‘Lord I’ve had enough, I wish I was dead.’  This is the prophet Elijah talking, one of the most extraordinary prophets in the bible.  He raised people from the dead, cured people, multiplied food miraculously, made the waters of the Jordan separate, and here he is just like any one of us saying, ‘Lord I’ve had enough.  I wish I was dead.’  And then he goes to sleep as people often do when they are feeling down.  It’s a kind of escape.  But it is interesting what happens next.  The Lord doesn’t say, ‘oh poor Elijah, I’ll make everything better for you.’  Instead he says, ‘get up and eat or you won’t have enough strength for the journey.’  Take nourishment, you need nourishment.

In the Gospel Jesus is talking about food again.  He is saying that there is a food that we need.  I am that food.  I am the bread of life.  The food that I give is my flesh.  When he said this most of the people left him.  They thought he was crazy.  They said, ‘who can listen to this?  He is nuts!’  But he didn’t change what he said, or take anything back.  He let them walk away, not understanding.

What he had said was, ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you can not have life within you.’  He was talking about the Eucharist, Holy Communion.  He was saying, ‘You need me.’  If you don’t have me you are empty, you are dead, you have nothing.’  My body and blood are the food that you need for the journey.  We need to feed ourselves properly, both physically, but also spiritually, or we will die spiritually.  And sadly many people do die spiritually, you can almost see it in their eyes.  There is a darkness, an emptiness.  I notice it especially in cities, where people are more inclined to lead crazy lives running after money as if it will bring them happiness, but they have nothing else, they are empty.

There is a terrible spiritual poverty in many people at the moment, especially in the so called ‘developed’ world.  People are spiritually empty, and they don’t know what’s wrong.  They are searching to find some kind of meaning, some kind of depth to their lives but they don’t know where to look.  Jesus is telling us where to look.  He is saying that he is the only one who will satisfy this emptiness in us.  We who already believe in Jesus are very fortunate or blessed.  You mightn’t think of yourself as blessed because you believe, but if you have any little bit of faith you are very fortunate.  And you do have faith, or you wouldn’t be here reading this.

Jesus has given us an immense treasure by giving us the Eucharist, because this is the gift of himself and we can receive him every day if we wish.  Through this extraordinary gift he nourishes us, gives us purpose, gives us direction.  It is the spiritual strength we need and the more open we are to him the more he can guide us and lead us deeper in faith.  The journey of faith is the greatest adventure if you are open to it.  The Eucharist is God’s gift to us.

 ‘The angel said to Elijah, “get up and eat or the journey will be too long for you.”’

18th Sunday Year B (Gospel: John 6:24-35) Do not work for food that cannot last; but work for food that endures to eternal life.

Recently a priest friend of mine was telling me that he was just back from holidays where he had been mountain climbing with a German priest friend of his.  They were somewhere in the mountains on the Austrian-German border.  His friend had a map, but it was five years old and one of the paths they took turned out to be very dangerous.  It was basically no longer usable.  He said that for most of it there was a rope on one side for safety, although there was a sheer drop on the other side.  But then they came to a place about 5m long where there was no rope, so they just had to cling to the side of the cliff on this extremely narrow ledge until they got past it.  He told me that it was quite terrifying and a matter of slowly taking one step at a time, then finding proper hand grip, then another step.  By the time he got to the far side he was quite exhausted and traumatised, but what interested me was that his friend—who is an experienced mountaineer—then told him to sit down and that they should eat something.  When you have been through an experience like that, eating changes your metabolism and calms you down.  And he said that it did just that.  Within a short time he was fine again.

There is also an interesting story in the Old Testament where the prophet Elijah is on the run having just worked an extraordinary miracle, but now queen Jezebel is out to kill him.  So he escapes into the desert, but at one point he sits down feeling fed up and prays to God, ‘Take my life, I am no better than my ancestors’, or in modern English, ‘I wish I was dead; I’ve had enough’.  Then he lies down and goes to sleep.  But then he is woken by an angel who tells him to get up and eat, so that he will have enough strength for the journey.  There he finds food beside him.  The right kind of nourishment is essential.

In this Gospel passage Jesus is just after working the miracle of feeding five thousand people with the five loaves and two fish and the people come after him to see more of this wonder-worker.  However, as is often the case, the miracle Jesus worked was pointing to something deeper and he says to them, ‘you are only looking for me because you got free food, but you didn’t see the “sign”.  What ‘sign’?  What was he talking about? And then he says, ‘don’t be worrying about temporary food, but look for the food that endures forever.’  The miracle of multiplying the loaves was a sign of something much deeper. Jesus then begins to teach them that there is another kind of food that we need for our whole life; not just material food that you eat, but food which is meaning/purpose/direction.  And then He tells them that He is this food that lasts forever, and the kind of food we need for the journey which is our whole life.  Jesus is the one who gives us strength and meaning to keep going.  He is the one who makes sense of what our whole life is about.  If you don’t have the right kind of meaning or purpose for being here, then it is very hard to keep going especially when things don’t make sense, as they so often don’t.

It is interesting too that in the second reading (Ephesians 4:17, 20-24) St. Paul says, ‘don’t live the kind of aimless life that Pagans live.’  That is exactly what can happen to us if we lose sight of our faith, or get too caught up in the world and worldly worries.  We forget what the real purpose of our life is about.  You see this happening all the time, especially when the economic boom was here.  Many people got completely carried away with money and forgot themselves.  I suppose now that things are harder it’s a lot easier for us to focus on what is really important.  That is much harder, but it is also helping us.

God is showing us that to have the right kind of strength for the journey, we need the right kind of food, and Jesus is this food.  ‘I am the bread of life’.  That is why Jesus gives himself to us in the Eucharist and speaks to us through his word, so that we have all the nourishment that we need for the journey.  If we know what our life is about, it is much easier to keep going even when we are struggling physically.  Where do we get direction from? In Jesus.  He is the one who makes sense of what we are about.

Now I know that there are also real worries such as how am I going to provide for my family when I’ve no work.  But what God is telling us is that if we focus on him first we will begin to discover that He will look after all of these needs as well.  Jesus must be at the centre, everything else second.

I am the bread of life. 

Whoever comes to me will never be hungry;

whoever believes in me will never thirst.

17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B (Gospel: John 6:1-5) The Lord feeds us with his own body and blood

The world we live in makes it very easy to become cynical.  There are explanations for so many things, and people are quick to dismiss what cannot be proved.  Well today I would like to tell you about two events which you could be very cynical about, but personally I believe in them.

The first is a Eucharistic miracle which occurred in Siena, Italy, on 14^th August 1730.  As people were preparing to celebrate the feast of the Assumption a thief broke into the church, picked the lock of the tabernacle and stole the gold ciborium, which contained the Holy Communion breads.  This was only discovered the following day and of course there was great distress when people realised that the sacred hosts were still in the container when it was stolen.  Two days later a priest in another church noticed something white sticking out of the offering box in the wall.  He then discovered all the stolen hosts.  Since the hosts were now quite dirty, it was decided to put these stolen hosts into another ciborium and allow them to naturally decay which you are allowed to do in such cases.  However, a few years later when they examined the hosts they discovered they were still perfect, so they continued to preserve them.  Fifty years later they were examined again and still found to be perfect and even smelt fresh.  To make a long story short, various investigations were done over the years, including putting aside other unconsecrated hosts and leaving them for a similar length of time, but after a few years they had completely decayed.  Today, 282 years later, the hosts are still as fresh as the day they were found and they are now on display in a special glass ciborium in the Franciscan church in Siena.  I was there a few years ago and saw them myself.  It is a wonderful thing to see.

The second event is also a Eucharistic miracle which happened in the 8^th century around 1200 years ago.  A priest was celebrating mass in a place called Lanciano, which is also in Italy.  Now this priest admitted to having doubts about the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  But one day while he was celebrating the mass the bread and wine actually turned into flesh and blood in his hands.  As he got an awful shock when this happened, he first tried to hide what had happened, but then he confessed his doubts to the people and showed them what had happened.  The flesh and blood were preserved and centuries later when science had developed enough, investigation showed that the flesh was real human flesh and was actually heart tissue.  The blood was also real human blood.  Both are still preserved today.  This is only a very brief account of these two miracles, however, they have both been officially recognised as miracles by the Church. 

Why am I talking about Eucharistic miracles?  We are not obliged to believe in them, but sometimes I think it is good to be reminded that these things have happened in different parts of the world, and there have been several other ones too.  Perhaps it is one of the ways that Jesus reminds us of the gift that He has given us in the Blessed Sacrament.  In each mass we believe that the bread and the wine really and truly become the body and blood of Jesus in when the priest says the prayers of consecration. 

Why does this happen?  What is the most important thing for most of us throughout our lives?  To have the people we love around us.  Well this is one way that Jesus gives himself to us in a really extraordinary and beautiful way, showing us that He is with us all the time and that we can even receive him into our own bodies each day if we wish.  He loves us and wants us to know and experience that.  There is no greater way to give yourself to another person than this.

The readings of today’s mass are also all about this.  The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish is a sign of how Jesus would continue to feed us with his own body and blood, which He continues to do today two thousand years after He walked the earth.  It is probably one of the most controversial teachings of our Church, and the one which often causes people to laugh and say ‘What a ridiculous thing to believe’.  And yet when Jesus himself gave this teaching it says that many of his disciples stopped following him.  They said, ‘It is too much, who can believe that?!’  So it has been something which people have struggled with from the beginning.  But remember, we are not asked to understand it, only to believe it.

The Eucharist is the greatest gift that God has given us, because it is the gift of Jesus himself to nourish us; not just holy bread, or a reminder, but really and truly the body and blood of Jesus. 

This is my body which will be given up for you.